China dominates list of world's top 10 science cities

Six of the world's top 10 science cities are now in China, according to the Nature Index 2025 Science Cities, a supplement to the science journal Nature.

Springer Nature issued the supplement on Sunday during a Beijing forum about sci-tech innovation hubs and science cities. Beijing leads this year's Nature Index, with Shanghai in second place, followed by the New York metropolitan area, the Boston metropolitan area, Nanjing, Guangzhou, the San Francisco Bay Area, Wuhan, the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area and Hangzhou.

Compared with last year's list, Guangzhou rose from 8th to 6th place, overtaking the San Francisco Bay Area, while Wuhan moved up one place, and Hangzhou jumped from 13th place to enter the top 10. Beijing has remained at the top of the list since 2016.

The Chinese capital's research output increased by over 9 percent between 2023 and 2024, while Shanghai saw an increase of nearly 20 percent. All US areas in the global top 10 experienced a decline in their share during the same period.

The supplement analyzes the performance of scientific cities across the five broad fields of biological, health, chemistry, earth and environmental, and physical sciences. Chinese cities continue to dominate the rankings in the latter three categories.

Jiang Guangzhi, head of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, said: "Beijing has attached great importance to the development of science, especially for the future industries, which represent the direction of the new round of science revolution.

"The future industries are a strategic component of high-end industrial development. Beijing has introduced 16 concrete measures, establishing two future industry pilot zones in Haidian and Changping districts, along with 10 future industry incubation platforms, to fully facilitate the growth and strengthening of future industries.

"Beijing will leverage its global innovation resource networks to closely monitor worldwide industrial and technological trends," Jiang added.

"Focusing on the formulation of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) for high-precision and advanced industries, the city will further optimize the development model for future industries and strengthen an enterprise-led paradigm for industry-academia-research integration."